When will it end? When will I finally open Twitter or turn on a TV without hearing about or seeing a mass shooting? I feel like our nation is caught in a loop with Lambchop and Sherry Lewis singing “This is the song that never ends.” WAKE UP AMERICA! Wake the freak up!
Let us remind ourselves that we enact change through using our voice. Your voice doesn’t just mean going out to protest or expressing yourself online. While those are all important components of activism, the most vital is your voting voice. Regardless of the implied importance of the primaries or the general election, voting gives you the right to stand up to the man!
Need we remind ourselves of what happened on that tragic November day in 2016?
If we do not stand up and use our voices for change, we might as well hand our salaries over to the NRA, enroll our kids in for-profit charter schools, and allow the big corporations to push us around like peasants. I, for one, will not sit idly by as this large Cheeto dictator allows our nation’s education secretary to even consider arming teachers and schools with guns.
Have those in power even read a newspaper lately? Have they looked at the news updates on their phones they clinch so desperately to? Have they looked at their loved ones and considered the horrific reality that it could happen to them?
As a former teacher, I cringe at the thought of putting weapons in a school. Some may say they are not weapons but means of protection. I argue that it depends on who has possession. And what a contradiction it is! What school have you walked in or campus you have driven on where you haven’t seen a sign that reads, “This is a weapons free zone”? Yet Betsy and her billionaire buddies want to make Dana and her NRA gang happy – so guns it is.
The latest tragedy to strike this once great nation happened on Sunday at a gaming tournament in Jacksonville, FL. I think we can all remember back in February when Florida experienced another mass shooting at Parkland High School. And yet again in 2016 at Pulse nightclub.
My heart and deepest sympathy go out to everyone affected by this recent event.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder. Will this incident bring forth the necessary gun reform our nation needs? Will we finally live in a nation where the safety of its citizens comes before the profits of its leaders?
This is where we must stand up and fight. Get out there with inspired students like David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez. Show them support and uplift gun reform laws. Help your community register new voters. Because if you don’t, you’re saying it’s OK for the federal government to use tax payer dollars to arm schools with guns over books, teachers, and supplies. You’re saying it’s OK for Dana and the NRA to continue influencing and protecting these mass murderers. You’re saying it’s OK for our nation’s students to be in harm’s way.